Chapter Text
MOONSHINE
1
After the accident, James spends the first three days barricaded in his hotel room with the phone receiver off the hook, drinking himself to oblivion whilst the storm outside - the most vociferous rainfall in Germany this last decade – hammers at the shutters and howls their accusations at him.
James listens very carefully and agrees with everything the storm says, takes his dues like a man and pours two glasses, one of which he drinks on Niki’s behalf.
On the forth day he finally succumbs to Alastair’s threats and his own brother’s begging and ventures back into the pits, driven by self-disgust and the stench of his own reeking bedsheets; the vomit that didnt quite make it to the sink. James makes sure to keep away from the TV and radio stations. He sulks in the shadows, avoiding the reporters baying for blood; and anyone 'friendly' who thinks it’s a good idea to update him on Niki’s condition that day suddenly gets to renew their appreciation of the racer’s extensive retention for swearwords.
James already knows that Niki’s not dead, and that’s more than enough to know. He drinks, he fucks, he wins races. He listens to the rain that doesn’t stop. He thinks he hears the rain in his head even when the skies are clear; a statcato hum like white noise that keeps him woolly and wrapped up from the din and industry of talking and shitting and eating and racing and moving on that everybody else seems to be getting so caught up with.
On day nine he goes to the hospital.
Marlene is there, and she ascends the corridor and moves towards him like a wraith; her hair mussed, slim shoulders encased in mourning clothes, eyes like open wounds on her face. She’s quietly intense; graceful under preasure as a willow is in a storm, the way Niki is, but infinitely more compassionate the way Niki is not. She thanks him for coming. James ducks his head and mutters his sympathies to the floor, unable to meet her eyes.
Marlene would know who had been responsible for that race, for that accident. She'd know who was really responsible for Niki’s half-dead state and he can’t face her, he can’t bear to look up and have her read the guilt in his eyes so he hides behind his hair and clears his throat until she touches his shoulder, and it is a gentle, almost motherly touch.
It does more to settle James than anything else in the last nine days.
It is she who takes his hand, and her hands are cool and slender and strong as she leads him to Niki’s private rooms as if James was a little public school boy who had found been crying in the stairwell because he lost his way to the infirmary, and James knows why Niki had choosen her, and he knows why Niki is better.
Before she closes the door she touches his shoulder again, like a blessing; like permission. Cry here. I wont tell.
Left to his own devices his eyes begins to rove and he’s lucky because the Austrian is sleeping, probably drugged to the gills. He’s lucky because Marlene was there to take his hand before he could turn tails and walk out of the hospital with his hands in his pockets like some adolecent. He’s starting to realise his life has been all about luck, the events that takes place around him that brings him from point to point, from finish line to finish line. That’s all James is, really. Luck and madness – and enough charisma to get away with being the arsehole that Nikki always saw through; was usually the only one who saw through.
There’s not much to Niki now that isn’t covered with gauze or bandages or hospital sheets, and James is dismayed to see even the pad of his fingers and palms are burnt, wrapped in gauze down to the fingertips. Probably an attempt to push the burning metal coffin he’d been trapped in.
A coffin James had put him into.
The skin on Niki’s forearm is unburnt however, and this is the only visible area which isn’t covered in bandages. The skin looks a little raw and pink but it's pristine, and James can’t tear his eyes away from how flawless it looks. How pale it is, and fragile; scored with blue veins.
And he can't get over how he’d taken everything about Niki for granted, right down to the only visible patch of skin that isn't blistered off on his forearm, like some sort of momento into the past. A calling card; here, Niki Lauda used to look like this, before James opened his mouth and almost killed the running world champion and one of the most talented racers to walk the earth.
Strange, how blankets and bandages can bring out a previously unsuspecting perfection. How Niki’s eyes are closed in sleep, but James feels like he's the one who’s been blind.
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